Hair by Nicole Spiegel-Gotsch

Dear Nora, I had a fight with my husband this morning and this day has been utter crap. No, that’s not it. Dear Nora, this prompt is a nightmare. It’s been rolling around in my head for a week. At least ten possibilities birthed and summarily dismissed—in the shower as I lathered up my special “natural cleansing co-wash” for curly hair—at night lying in the dark staring up at the ceiling desperate to sleep as the fan spins monotonously—on the weekend, furiously de-furring every dog and cat hair covered crevice. 

For those who are curious, allow me to grace you with the B-sides:

1. Hair the musical (which despite the presence of Treat Williams, I never “dug” as much as everyone else seemed too. 
2. Hashtag #covidhair featuring my husband who bravely (or naively) volunteered to go under the clippers emerging pleased if unevenly shorn
3. My mother’s past the waist, midnight expanse of hair. Glossy in her hand-painted college graduation picture. No modern photo filter ever produced such a beautiful, idealized portrait as this—her seemingly innocent yet mischievous smile, the Rose of Spanish Harlem, her perfectly gold-capped front tooth winking at me. 
4. Chris. His long cap of curls paired with milky white skin, blue eyes, and erotic albeit manipulative Scorpio charms earned him a comparison to Vivian Leigh’s Scarlett O’Hara character in Gone with the Wind. His chest and belly were a pelt to disappear in. No one ever guessed he was half Dominican, his dad a rich, dark coffee color like my Tío Moncho whose giant, full-color poster of Afro-Puerto Rican baseball legend Roberto Clemente poised heroically, hung proudly in the living room of him and my Tia Rositas Bronx NY apartment.
5. My poor Dad, on camp photo day, inexpertly trying to tame my thick long locks into something suitable for a lifetime memory, something that would keep me from falling short, being different from the other girls—and failing.
6. Jennifer (the one black girl in my class) and Jeannette (the only other Puerto Rican girl in my class), two teenagers on a mission to “fix me”, my hair, my clothes. It was like ambush makeover 1980s edition. Armed with a blowdryer, industrial-sized cans of Aquanet, and a rainbow of eyeshadows they were going to make me look if not “right” less “other”. They styled me like a real-life Fashion Plate, picking out clothes for me to wear that would smooth down all my rough, wild edges—make me more “put together” or as Toni Morrison so perfectly stated in The Bluest Eye “get rid of the funkyness”
7. The post-Jennifer/Jeannette intervention decision to never waste another moment trying to be something I’m not. Though like the prime directive in Star Trek this lesson often gets forgotten, bent, or disregarded. Jennifer and Jeannette would be my last truly close female friends.

It’s almost 4 o’clock now. I’m 46 years old. Unlike another of my literary heroes Joyce Carol Oates who well into her 80s still uses an author photo showing her in herself in younger years (and probably in the best possible light), my Linkedin photo is me—how I actually look if you meet me on the street. Puerto Rican/Jewish, light-skinned, long-nosed, curly sometimes frizzy-haired, fashion-challenged, mixed-race family—me. The me who was spat on by another kid when I was 8 years old after he found out I was Puerto Rican. The me whose brother-in-law-to-be asked, “how Jewish are you?” Jewish enough that Hitler would have burned me in his oven,” I replied thinking of my Dad recounting a story of growing up in Astoria when he was jumped by neighborhood kids and smeared with dog shit for being “a Jew”. The me who always has a foot in more than one camp. The me who remembers sitting cross-legged on a dark brown, nubby, carpeted floor at my Abuela’s feet, turning to face her saying “trenza” (braid) or “moño” (bun) loudly, practically shouting, desperately wanting to overcome her deafness—making my mouth say the words clearly, writing in the palm of her grandma-hand with my little-kid finger remembering that sometimes the sight in her one eye was too poor to lip read. Ooo-kayy should say in her accented, infrequently used English, and I was happy.

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